November in Chicago: By now, Lake Michigan has shifted from the vivacious teal of summer into a churning mass of taciturn gray – and it is a crapshoot whether the first snow has blanketed our streets. Meteorological variables aside, one thing remains certain: the heat and exhibitions are most certainly on. Ranging from explorations of the banal to the sublime, political liberation or its abnegation, many galleries and institutions are meeting the discursive and lived challenges of today with gusto. Peppered across the city are seven new and noteworthy shows to make the shortening days feel fuller.
Bassim Al Shaker, Thomas Hirschhorn, Annette Lemieux, Brian Maguire, Michael Rakowitz, and Paul Seawright
‘These Times’
Rhona Hoffman Gallery
Through December 21, 2024
After more than 50 years of operation, Rhona Hoffman recently announced she will be shuttering her West Town exhibition space come spring, but the doyenne of Chicago’s art scene has no intention of coasting to the finish line. If the artist list and title are not dead giveaways, ‘These Times’ balances intellectual and formal rigor with a confrontational look at a world mired in uncertainty. Each artist brings an equal measure of eye-catching precision with an acrid critical bent, but perhaps most tantalizing is the potential for interplay between Hirschhorn and Rakowitz, who share a mutual affinity for the social epiphanies found buried in the disjecta membra of globalized consumerism.